There are still 144 days left until Election Day, but Iowa’s role as a swing state in the presidential race means Iowa voters are a targeted audience.
President Obama’s campaign is airing an ad in Iowa that attacks Republican rival Mitt Romney’s record as a governor. “Massachusetts lost, a rate twice the national average,” the ad’s narrator says.
Meanwhile, Romney’s latest ad focuses on a recent Obama gaffe, when the president said: “The private sector’s doing fine.”
Romney’s campaign organized a conference call with reporters on Thursday to underscore that advertising message. Brian Kennedy, Romney’s Iowa campaign chairman, said the remark shows Obama is “out of touch” with what’s going on in America.
“Frankly, it was insulting to the 23 million Americans who are struggling for work in the Obama economy,” Kennedy said.
The Obama campaign had former Iowa Governor Tom Vilsack speak with reporters Wednesday.
“It’s the goal of the campaign to have the largest presence and largest ground game in rural Iowa…any presidential candidate has ever had,” Vilsack said.
Vilsack cited the 85 campaign trips Obama made to Iowa in 2007 as he sought support in the 2008 Caucuses.
“I think Iowans saw then and I can tell you I’ve seen over the last three and a half years a man who is hardworking and is honest and is committed every single day to building an economy that is built to last,” Vilsack said.
Kennedy, from the Romney campaign, counters that the last three and a half years have undermined the private sector.
“Governor Romney understands the private sector is in deep trouble and when the prviate sector’s in deep trouble this country’s in deep trouble because the economy’s not growing,” Kennedy says, “jobs are not being created.”
Romney is due in Iowa Monday for a campaign stop in Davenport. Both Romney and Obama campaigned in Iowa in May. Polls show the race in Iowa is a dead heat.